Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest

natruska said:

Yeah, there's definitely a pattern of desensitization. I mean, just look at the in-thread treatment of Mosi. It's fringe, sure, but there were a few voters calling her 'the cockroach' and showing little or no sympathy. Or look at Kim, who - to be fair - was a very minor character in a segment we didn't directly control. Who died in a brutal if quick manner that barely anyone noticed. It's in the nature of the setting, really. Every battle has hundreds or thousands of people dying brutally in the vacuum or being shredded into fleshy micrometeorites for…what?

It's not a choice. Things just happen. People do their jobs, and they either die or they don't. Even the descriptions of mecha flights are like this, you might've noticed. The pilots get a spike through the cockpit, or get grabbed by the arm and shredded from head to toe with rounds, and then they're dead. They aren't killed, in the way we're used to heroes and villains dying. One second they're there, and the next they still are. But flesh tears and blood stops pumping. And it's gruesome, unthinkable, and then it's on to the next.

Nobody in this quest has agency. Not the pilots, or the crewmen sitting at their consoles when the hull breaks, or the civilians who don't even realize they're a target. Not even the named characters. We don't see them making choices, we see them doing things that they feel they have to. Because they're right, or because they're important, or for whatever. Mosi is the one beautiful, heart-rending exception who never had a chance to be anything but what she was and managed to change.

Not even our precious scans tech is in control. She'll do her job the best she can, and she'll live or die.

I dunno, I'm rambling incomprehensibly and definitely wrong about lots of things. This quest is hard.

edit: obviously I used a lot of absolutes in this post for things that aren't anywhere close to absolutes, but I dunno.

Edit 2: and if I sound a bit too down, I don't mean to. This quest is awesome and heartwarming it's just also going to kill me.

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I fully Agree. I just want to further suggest that players are simply fatigued with every choice having no good options, and are reaching a point of apathy. It makes even player agency feel really low. There's no ability to think outside the box, there's no point where we genuinely feel like we got a win, just a less bad loss. I'm not stating this as a criticism, just as a way to understand why people would change how they vote.

Well, it's just five more real updates left in this, so if you want to just bear with me for that long, you won't have to worry about it anymore.

I'll close the vote on Thursday and try to keep to something close to this pace again.

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

I've been convinced away from civilian casualties I think. May very well flop back by Thursday.

For what it's worth, I may have joined late, but I really like the style of voting in this quest. The tension is magnificent.

@Gazetteer I wasn't trying to suggest that people wanted you to end the quest.

natruska said:

Yeah, there's definitely a pattern of desensitization. I mean, just look at the in-thread treatment of Mosi. It's fringe, sure, but there were a few voters calling her 'the cockroach' and showing little or no sympathy. Or look at Kim, who - to be fair - was a very minor character in a segment we didn't directly control. Who died in a brutal if quick manner that barely anyone noticed. It's in the nature of the setting, really. Every battle has hundreds or thousands of people dying brutally in the vacuum or being shredded into fleshy micrometeorites for…what?

It's not a choice. Things just happen. People do their jobs, and they either die or they don't. Even the descriptions of mecha flights are like this, you might've noticed. The pilots get a spike through the cockpit, or get grabbed by the arm and shredded from head to toe with rounds, and then they're dead. They aren't killed, in the way we're used to heroes and villains dying. One second they're there, and the next they still are. But flesh tears and blood stops pumping. And it's gruesome, unthinkable, and then it's on to the next.

Nobody in this quest has agency. Not the pilots, or the crewmen sitting at their consoles when the hull breaks, or the civilians who don't even realize they're a target. Not even the named characters. We don't see them making choices, we see them doing things that they feel they have to. Because they're right, or because they're important, or for whatever. Mosi is the one beautiful, heart-rending exception who never had a chance to be anything but what she was and managed to change.

Not even our precious scans tech is in control. She'll do her job the best she can, and she'll live or die.

I dunno, I'm rambling incomprehensibly and definitely wrong about lots of things. This quest is hard.

edit: obviously I used a lot of absolutes in this post for things that aren't anywhere close to absolutes, but I dunno.

Edit 2: and if I sound a bit too down, I don't mean to. This quest is awesome and heartwarming it's just also going to kill me.

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I can see that, I guess. Looking back, I get a sense of struggle from this quest. The characters do what they can to survive, with few victories. And sometimes, as with Mosi, players themselves have to struggle with the outcocme.

But the characters are fleshed out well. The obstacles in their path feel realistic, not arbitrary. That keeps me engaged in the story.

Antix_Shadows said:

I fully Agree. I just want to further suggest that players are simply fatigued with every choice having no good options, and are reaching a point of apathy.

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Well, if you're suggesting that the votes for this choice reflect apathy, I would have to strongly disagree.

I voted for what I did because I think it ultimately offers a better chance of a good outcome, not because I'm apathetic towards casualties. I'm sure those who voted for the other choices did what they thought was best as well.

I would like to say again that I like the tone -or the bleakness, I supppose- in this Quest. That feeling of constantly being on the back foot against a powerful foe is something I find really refreshing. To me, most Quests feel like a "choose how to win" kinda thing, where eventually a minor-to-medium setback occurs and the thread goes wild with outrage.

Here though, there's a sense of risk to it. There's a threat of failure. But at the same time, it does make the victories we get that much greater. Yes, the crew of the Rose have all been killed almost to a woman, but through their sacrifice we bought the lives of all the civilians we were holding, including Faiza. Yes, Ito died in a battle he could've survived, but he managed to save the princess' experimental ship whose technology eventually made it into the Rose and the material required to upgrade it. Step by step, we are making slow increments towards victory, even if it's expensive.

Though it also helps that it feels like a mecha anime. Though the small group of heroic individuals win victory upon victory, the powerful empire still has more forces in reserve. Because this is a war and it takes more than one unit doing well for your side to actually win. Mecha anime are also filled with sudden deaths, so Ito is in good company there. They also often end on a bloodbath as the series ends but surely that won't be copied here

The character writing also adds to this. I don't think I need to say anything about the allied forces (my feelings on Owusu are well documented), but we also have the sympathetic antagonists that you hope somehow make it out of this war alive. Like Kim or to a lesser extent Commander Green.

... Actually, that's something we haven't talked about. Am I the only one who kinda hopes Green somehow lives to fight another day? Or if he has to die then at the very least let him die impaled on Lori's long-range cannon.

Antix_Shadows said:

I fully Agree. I just want to further suggest that players are simply fatigued with every choice having no good options, and are reaching a point of apathy. It makes even player agency feel really low. There's no ability to think outside the box, there's no point where we genuinely feel like we got a win, just a less bad loss.

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Yeah. But that's war.

We're not playing Luke Skywalker, or even one of his squadron mates Red-X. We're not the Rebellion that's going to obliterate the Divine Empire with pluck and space operatics. We're Britain.

In 1940, when the Nazis and their allies had taken damn near all of continental Europe and the Battle of Britain was raging, the RAF bled over a hundred pilots a week. Usually around half were wounded, half were killed or missing. In the worse weeks it got up to two hundred. And that's just pilots, not including gunners and bombardiers. In total deaths RAF Bomber Command was hit far harder than the fighter pilots. British cities and airfields were pounded by bombs despite the best efforts of thousands of pilots and gunners and civil defense and radar operators and weather reporters and hundreds of other vital jobs that would fill a book. Britain was one little speck on the edge of Europe, fighting alone.

We say the British won the Battle of Britain of course, but that's partly hindsight isn't it? Their great victory was being the only country in the war not crushed under the Nazi boot. Even when the bombers stopped coming, Britain's main ally would stay out of the war for another 13 months. They didn't gain anything except time and the names of 1,497 dead to put in the little book in Westminster Abbey. And it'd take more deaths to buy more time, too. Hundreds, thousands of merchant mariners, British as well as American and Norwegian. 1,418 crewmen aboard the HMS Hood, dead in three minutes when she sank in the Denmark Strait.

None of them had a choice. Well, that's not true. They had a choice, but they never would've taken it. They could've stepped away, but it's just not right. So you go to war, industrial war, knowing the odds aren't on your side, and you don't get to choose after that. Sometimes you scramble and the radar tells you it was a false alarm; sometimes you're sent into a ball of enemy fighters that fills the canopy from bar to bar. Sometimes the floatplanes find a submarine, and sometimes they find the Bismarck. Heroics happen, but they don't change the strategy and they don't make it into the history books.

Petals is the best war story I've read on SV because it understands that and works with it perfectly. It isn't pointless. Everything we do matters. England expects every man to do his duty. But our choices just tilt the scales a little, mess with the timeline a smidge. History doesn't move because one person asks it to. We're not winning the civil war here, we're living Amani's life and doing her duty. And she moves little icons around on a map.

If we win, Titan and the Empire will still exist. Thousands of people will die for that victory. The war will continue. And that'll be all. The details haven't been worked out yet, but that's the gist of what'll be in the high school history books. Maybe the zealot Empire will collapse from within, or maybe we'll manage enough strength to push back, or maybe things'll just stay like this for forever. Stronger countries beat up weaker countries, until the weaker one becomes strong. Amani can't grab history and twist it into something else, but she can certainly control some parts of her life. This is the greatest adventure of her life, the moment that will stay with her forever.

And I think what matters to me - what might be some little consolation to Amani, for all the friends she's already lost and likely will lose soon - is that they're fighting to protect the people of Titan, just like those pilots were on Earth. And almost 80 years after the Battle of Britain, the Brits still remember the Few.

I think Titan will take good care of them and us.

also man I'm in a sappy mood right now huh. sorry for dumping this on you.

really, i think the issue was the last big battle. a lot of long term choices paid of there, complete with a full mini arc going into resolving in a way that by word of QM gave us another big boost to it, and we still suffed a fairly serious defeat for it. the enemy pulled a miracle disengage, and then linked up with other scatterd fores to gut our fleet as we're on the way to stop the main thrust of the assault. In a grand strategy term, it was either a small win or a draw. It was the closet thing we got to an actual triumph, and we still lost ground. We stoped them from hitting a hard point that could be used to hurt them as we died, but they manged to greatly reduce our ability to fight them over titan, which is something that losing will kill us.

it was the big thing all of our sacrifices, and bleeding had led up to, the thing we scarified our allies and shipmates for, and it really did not feel like it matted that much. it was the enemy going for a bonus objective while the bulk of the fleet killed the infrastructure needed to exist as more than a single isolated fortress. Worse, while we got out of it with really only 1/3 rd of a consequence, that 1/3rd ticked over a counter and ended up being a full drawback. so all those times we bled for and advantage in that fight? all those good choices we made? every thing we worked for? it very quickly started to feel very hollow. The one bright spot of triumph that was supposed to provide contrast ended up tasting of ash. which is a problem, recuse you always need contrast.

10ebbor10 said:

The big difference I think is that you always gave us the votes to kill civilians after the battle was won.

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I'm almost certain this is the actual reason for the vote shift.

If you vote for more people to have been killed saving civilians once the victory is assured, you're increasing the poignancy of their heroic sacrifice.

If you vote for it beforehand, you're "risking" a tragic ending where we straight up lose.

It's a very different decision making approach.

Antix_Shadows said:

@Gazetteer I wasn't trying to suggest that people wanted you to end the quest.

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It's not that Gaz is wanting to end it. When Gaz says "five more real updates left", she means that the quest is almost over. This is a story with an extremely defined story to it and not an infinitely ongoing one.

Given that, and way more aimed at the general audience than anyone specific, maybe we should choose, one last time, to stick to our guns and save the non-combatants.

I think we can safely assume that picking either of the other options aren't secretly a double-up wrong choice in the sense of "aha, the enemy fleet is larger than expected, so not only are there more enemies, but the civilians are also still going to suffer!". That's very clearly not how she's written the quest to date, so... I think I'll change my vote and see if we can avoid overly massive civilian deaths.

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

Inserted tally

natruska said:

And I think what matters to me - what might be some little consolation to Amani, for all the friends she's already lost and likely will lose soon - is that they're fighting to protect the people of Titan, just like those pilots were on Earth. And almost 80 years after the Battle of Britain, the Brits still remember the Few.

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... So the Few we shall be.

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

random_npc said:

really, i think the issue was the last big battle.

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I know it was for me. I really liked the initial premise of being asked 'how/what we lost' but when you do just about everything right and still get hit with 5 bad choices, two of which are catastrophic, what the hell is the point of even trying to do well? Between that and the MC's sister who has enough plot armor to shrug off a tank shell it really feels like we are playing the baddies. After all, the only thing that could explain everything satisfactory is divine intervention on behalf of the enemy.

I still love the first part of the story, and I'll do a full read-through when it ends but for god's sake you can allow the good guys to get in a win every once in a while. It wouldn't destroy the overall tone.

[X] Civilian casualties are already worse than you'd feared

...I hate myself for this, but I can't risk anything else. This way, we have a chance.

If nothing else, rage is a hell of an anesthetic.

Mr Apollo said:

I know it was for me. I really liked the initial premise of being asked 'how/what we lost' but when you do just about everything right and still get hit with 5 bad choices, two of which are catastrophic, what the hell is the point of even trying to do well? Between that and the MC's sister who has enough plot armor to shrug off a tank shell it really feels like we are playing the baddies. After all, the only thing that could explain everything satisfactory is divine intervention on behalf of the enemy.

I still love the first part of the story, and I'll do a full read-through when it ends but for god's sake you can allow the good guys to get in a win every once in a while. It wouldn't destroy the overall tone.

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the aggravating thing is that the last big battle would have been a nearly pure win, sure a pure win for what turned out to be a side show battle, but a badly needed win nevertheless. But we passed the threshold for enemy forces escaping so the next update was "SUFFER FOR YOUR CHOICES!" Which really was more a timing thing than anything. That was going to fire off at some point, but I think it fired off at the wrong time in terms of paceing.

natruska said:

Or look at Kim, who - to be fair - was a very minor character in a segment we didn't directly control. Who died in a brutal if quick manner that barely anyone noticed.

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I was doing something pretty deliberate with that scene, in that on paper it's a pretty bog standard mecha anime trope -- the dramatic reveal of the heroic ace pilot fighting in their new unit (modelling kit on sale now!), probably while a sweet insert song plays and they completely outclass some bad guys who don't even see it coming. But I was writing this from the perspective of two (intended to be) relatively sympathetic characters in over their heads in these shitty civilian mecha, and as a result I tried to write it more or less as if it were an encounter with a horror monster, as opposed to just "Amani's girlfriend, Lori". In addition to Kim, Mosi's suit gets dismantled more or less piece by piece, and all she can really do is delay the death blow from landing.

I may have listened to this Mother Mother song about being dismembered on loop while I wrote that whole segment.



I really like it when people give me detailed feedback about my writing, so thanks for taking the time

Antix_Shadows said:

@Gazetteer I wasn't trying to suggest that people wanted you to end the quest.

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VagueZ said:

It's not that Gaz is wanting to end it. When Gaz says "five more real updates left", she means that the quest is almost over. This is a story with an extremely defined story to it and not an infinitely ongoing one.

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Yeah, more or less. I always knew roughly how long this thing would take, but following Iapetus I had enough information about general direction that I could lay out exactly how many updates there were left before the end.

A number I've had to revise heavily several times, but the current one feels pretty final at this late stage.

[] Resolve the problem with a weird workaround, you're good enough

Can't we just do this again?

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

Gazetteer said:

I may have listened to this Mother Mother song about being dismembered on loop while I wrote that whole segment.

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I'm going to have Ghosting stuck in my head for the next week now damnit...

Ugh, I'm going to sound a little bitter when I say this, but....

The vote was going one way, and then the QM posts, "Wow, I can't believe you all are doing this. This is so unlike you. You never sacrifice civilians."

And then suddenly the vote starts going the other way.

Briefvoice said:

Ugh, I'm going to sound a little bitter when I say this, but....

The vote was going one way, and then the QM posts, "Wow, I can't believe you all are doing this. This is so unlike you. You never sacrifice civilians."

And then suddenly the vote starts going the other way.

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I'm sorry, it really wasn't my intent to sway the vote one way or another. If it feels like that's what happened, I'll try to do a better job of keeping comments like that you myself in the future unless I feel like there's an actual misunderstanding going on. In this case I was just a bit surprised.

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected
Eh, I figure this just makes it more likely our anime victory comes from Perbeck sniping the Divine Emperor right through his eyeball. But not with her shot, oh no, she actually runs calcs so she shoots her evil opposite in the face, and when that mech explodes, it catches another mech, and knocks them into the forcefield of the Emperor's Flagship, which triggers that explosion, and then the shrapnel from that explosion, THAT is what runs the Divine Emperor through.
Their 'God' does not just die, he dies as an afterthought.

[X] Civilian casualties are already worse than you'd feared

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

I'm pretty sure we managed to save those shipments of fleet-building supplies earlier in the quest, so as long as our infrastructure is intact we should be able to recover in time for the next war.